Pages

Wednesday, February 8, 2017

Taiwan's Catch-22

Some Shower Thoughts - yes, this is what I think about in the shower. I've been traveling in Vietnam and, having returned to Taiwan on a red-eye after an overnight bus ride, am light on sleep. Hopefully this doesn't mean the post below is incoherent or overly repetitive. I'm sure someone has written about this before, but hey, I like to share Shower Thoughts so here goes.

Anyway...

I hear a lot - in media, in real life, in comments - that the US
need not change its "One China Policy" because "Taiwan"
doesn't exist as a national entity and the "Republic of China" still
technically considers itself the rightful and only government of China. That,
barring a formal change in the constitution of the ROC (and one would assume a
name change as well) making this claim, there is no need to re-examine US
policy because people "on both sides of the Strait" still officially
believe that there is "One China".

This is one of those things where a perspective that is
reasonable on its face actually hides much more sinister motives, even if
unintentionally so, though I often doubt that they are unintentional.

What this particular argument is doing, by appearing to simply
defend official norms, is playing straight into Chinese propaganda, if not
China’s outright strategy to marginalize Taiwan.

Those who say this must know perfectly well that Taiwan can’t change its official
stance, no matter how much it may want to (and polls consistently show that thepeople want to). Doing so would, in Chinese eyes, constitute a move towards
formal independence (which is what the Taiwanese likely actually want), which
China has consistently said would cause them to immediately declare war. While
Taiwanese do favor independence and do consider themselves, by and large,
Taiwanese rather than Chinese, pretty much nobody in Taiwan wants to go to war
because they quite rightly realize that war, well, sucks.

Taiwan, therefore, regardless of what the people want, is locked into making
this claim that they are officially the government of China – a claim they
pretty much try to ignore because its existence is just as inconvenient and
unwanted as it is necessary – because the other option is to watch the country
they have built get demolished by the PLA.

Consider the double standard: you insist Taiwan must change their claim if they
don’t want to be considered Chinese, and to continue to have a government that
considers itself “China” can only mean that the people are, or think of
themselves as, Chinese. Yet you also insist that they not do so: to “provoke”
China in such a way would be problematic, would cause war, would make Taiwan a
“troublemaker”. Taiwan doesn’t want to make trouble, does it? No, little
Taiwan, just sit tight, don’t make Big China angry. Don’t start a war. You
don’t want to be a troublemaker, do you?

Oh, but if you don’t make trouble and instead choose not to make any official
changes, you must therefore think of yourselves as Chinese, because you didn’t
make any official changes. If you want us to think of you as Taiwanese...

...oh but don’t do that because you wouldn’t want to
be provocateurs, would you?

How is this not a painfully, nakedly obvious Catch-22 for Taiwan?

Consider as well that the only reason the ROC – and therefore its vision of
China - exists in Taiwan is because the Nationalists decided to claim Taiwan, then
flee to it, and then proceed to set up a government that nobody in Taiwan said
they wanted. They weren’t invited, they invaded. That constitution claiming to
be the sole government of China, even the name “Republic of China” or even calling themselves Chinese, are not
things that the people of Taiwan ever decided, together, through self-determination, that they wanted to claim or do. They were ideas forced on Taiwan
by a government that was never invited to govern and has since democratized, under a name that can't be gotten rid of so easily.

Consider, then, what you are really saying when you say “the last time I
checked ‘Taiwan’ was officially the ‘Republic of China’ and therefore considers
itself a part of China, too”: you are saying that any sort of indication of
what the people of Taiwan want doesn’t matter, all that matters is a position
decided by a regime that came from China uninvited and decided unilaterally for
the people already living here what their government stood for, that now cannot
be changed because the country they fled has threatened war if they do so.

What you are saying is that you do not believe in self-determination. What you
are saying is that you think modern-day colonialism is okay, not only that, but
that a provision in a document that can’t be removed under threat of war is a
perfectly fine barometer by which to determine the will of a people. That they
literally must risk getting pummeled by China in order to change a few words on
a piece of paper before you will take them seriously. You know it is
impossible; you know that what was claimed by the ROC back when the ROC was a
dictatorship does not reflect the will of the Taiwanese people, but you demand
the impossible anyway. Why?

Let’s say a dictator claimed to speak for you, and then years after dismantling
that dictatorship you could not officially, on a government level, disavow that
dictator’s words without watching your city get blown up, but on a personal
level were quite clear that you never bought into the original rhetoric. How would you feel if everyone else in the world stuck their fingers
in their ears and shouted “la la la we can’t hear you, you must think that
because your former dictator said so and you don’t want to die, la la la”?

How would you feel if your country underwent a massive upheaval in civil
society, bringing it from a nation unwilling to speak truth to power about its
identity to one willing to own its nationhood unapologetically, and the rest of
the world collectively ignored it, pretending you all still felt the way you
seemed to before it all happened? Because that's basically how Taiwan has been treated since the Sunflower Movement.

Does that make any sense at all? And if it does, is it really so easy to tune
out the cognitive dissonance of claiming to care about freedom and democracy
around the world? Can you really claim to be anti-war if you think that a
nation must risk war – a war it will lose - to express its true desires? Can
you really claim to be pro-democracy if you think the ideas of a former
dictator speak for the will of a democratic people? Is that really the price an
already-sovereign nation must pay to be taken seriously when there are other
valid ways of knowing how the people of that nation feel?

Consider this as well: this is exactly what China wants you to think. They want
you to set an impossible standard for taking Taiwan seriously: either they are
“troublemakers” provoking a “war” or they “clearly still think of themselves as
Chinese because their government officially says so”. There is no path forward
for Taiwan to claim its sovereignty and identity on an official level. You’ve
blocked out in your mind the notion that a people might have a different will
and vision for their future than what they are forced to claim by a hostile
power. Or perhaps you are claiming that the position they are forced to hold,
literally at missile-point, is a sincere one when you know full fucking well
it’s not.

And you’ve done this because this has been China’s propaganda campaign all
along. They want you to mentally block Taiwan off into two alternatives: either
they are a troublemaker and warmonger disturbing peace in Asia, or they think
they are Chinese. The more impossible you make Taiwan’s position by refusing to
consider data that shows the true will of the Taiwanese people, the easier you
make China’s goal of annexing Taiwan and then pretending it’s not a hostile
takeover of a sovereign state.

In short, if you insist that Taiwan has to disavow the
positions of the ROC (which were forced on it) in order to be taken seriously
as a sovereign nation with a national identity, but then say that any
provocation of China makes Taiwan a "troublemaker", then you've set
Taiwan up for a Catch-22. Either you know that and you're a jerk, or you don't
and you're a useful idiot.

No comments:

Look Me Over!

Who is this crazyperson?

I'm an American woman living and working in Taipei, Taiwan. I work in corporate training, travel frequently, drink far too much coffee and alcohol (often together). I love reading, photography and exploring any city I find myself in. I have a lovely husband, Brendan and a fat, insane cat named Zhao Cai. I write quite a bit about being a female expat and women's issues in Asia, as well as travel, hiking, photography and food - with a few personal anecdotes thrown in.